These Essays and Other Essays

Since this is my one-hundred and forty-second consecutive daily essay, I think it is safe to say that I have gotten used to writing these dreaded things. I have gotten so used to it that I cannot go a day without writing one. However, this all dissipates when I come across needing to write one for scholarly reasons, for university.

It is then that my mind shuts down. I stare at a blank document, and I fear beginning writing it or even writing it at all. I think this is because I fear the judgement of my teacher. How is it that she requires me to write? Will I leave a silly mistake behind for her to pick up and judge me on? Will I fulfil all that is required of me according to the attached criteria sheet? All of this clouds my mind and I do not end up writing the actual essay until the day before it is due, rather the night before it is due.

Writing other essays, this included, comes almost naturally to me because I have the power to choose my audience, to write whatever it is that I please to write about and to write it at any given length, none of which exceed a thousand words and ramble slightly off topic. Writing particular essays, though, such as the one required of me by this Wednesday, proves an uncertainty, until of course the moment it is due. There has never been an essay that I have not been able to write and you may say that this is slightly hypocritical of me to do such a thing, that is write an essay about the struggles of writing an essay, however the contexts are quite varied in both situations.

Consider this: this essay, right now, is like a wild bird. It is not caged, nor is it rendered by 'owners' or people who have agency over it. Now, consider the essay for university a bird that is domesticated, controlled, a bird whose owner has agency on what it consumes, how long it is left outside of the cage and the lengths it can stray. That is how I feel about these two types of essays. Also, the essays I write on here are predominantly informal, which means that I do not need to bother to look through academic journals, use what I have found in these academic journals and then reference them. In the university essay, though, that is the vital part. The vital part in that case also lies within the links between the academia and my argument.

Like when I draw, I prefer to write in my own time, in a time allocated for myself, in a time that I see fit, and on a subject matter that I decide. I know that it is required of me to produce essays as part of inputting my own voice into the university system, and I know that I am certainly contradicting myself in that I am a pro-essayer and I encourage others to be too and to turn away from their fears of essays, however it is painful to form an opinion that is biased about a book that I did not at any stage tolerate and about the topic of gender which I equally cannot tolerate. It is simply too difficult.

However, I have spent three weeks internally complaining. The university essay is due this Wednesday, which means that I have the rest of today and tomorrow to begin and complete the one-thousand and five hundred worded piece. This is not enough time, so I suppose I will have to end this essay here.

Tony Birch's Blood Review

I have never been too fond of Australian stories, and that may be because I live and was born in Australia, so the excitement of anything Australian has surely died down since my eyes first opened – however, Tony Birch’s Blood was beyond my expectations.

If anything, it is a story, a journey, one that you feel like you are taking along with the main characters, Jesse and Rachel. Their journey was a tough one, reaching several climaxes and in each, I screamed internally, “no, no! Please don’t die!” And luckily enough, my wishes were answered. Throughout the book, which took me two days to read, I thoroughly connected with these young characters, and connected with every other Australian thing in the story – the ‘Scotch Finger’ and ‘Monte Carlo’ biscuits, the pies, the ‘servo’, the ‘jacks’, the Aboriginal paintings, and the famous ‘Commodore’. I felt at home the entire time.

And that is what was interesting about me reading this book. At first, I did not think that I would even want to connect with it at all, I had the motive of just finishing reading it for the sake of being slightly ahead of my Fiction class at university, and partly because I am excited to get on to the other three compulsory books. I like to be prepared, and in this case, I am glad that I am that way because it was the most interesting Australian read.

For its entirety I had not grown into boredom once. I was entertained, though in a negative way from all the violence, and the story played out in my mind just like a movie. I could picture the look on little Rachel’s face every time that she felt Jesse was emotionally slipping away, I could picture Jesses little pre-pubescent face as he tried to ‘step up’ to the bullies that they came across, and I could imagine the pain-stricken Gwen, the mother of these two children, who despite her best efforts in pleasing all of the men she had come across, failed her children to the point where her destructive lifestyle soon became theirs.

I automatically found myself wanting these children to evade the welfare, stick together and become reunited with their grandpa once again. I felt as though I was watching a documentary, only reading the subtitles. It all felt so real, and now that it is all finished, it still does not feel abstract. I still can see the children, dirtied with mud and blood and running through the back streets of the outskirts of Melbourne, my own hometown, trying not to bump into the criminals they are running from.

Tony Birch writes so brilliantly, in a down-to-earth manner, so as to make the reader feel as though they are not reading, which is in a way why this book was such an easy and fast read, just like my lecturer had made it out to be. It is addicting until the very last sentence, and captures every scenario in the most realistic way possible.

I do not regret spending double the money that I should have in the university bookshop to purchase this book, rather than waiting a couple of weeks after purchasing it online for around half the price I paid. I will gladly place it on my bookshelf, in its slightly withered state, and watch with pride as someone picks it up and asks me what it is about. “Home,” I will reply, “home.”